Caught in a Moment (The Alex Trueman Chronicles Book 1)

by Martin Dukes

  “Gary Payne,” she roared, throwing the book down on her desk. “I will not have language like that used in my lesson. Where on earth do you think you are? And get your filthy finger out of your nose. This instant I say!”

  “I’m sorry, Miss,” came Gary’s strangled voice from behind his hands. “I’ve got something stuck up my nostril.”

  “Well you’d better go to the toilets and get it out!” she snapped. “And what the dickens have you got written on your head?” She narrowed her eyes as Gary stumbled past her. “Well, I’ve seen it all now. Don’t expect me to argue with you on that score, you silly lad.”

  There was uproar in the class during the whole of this interlude, of course. Alex, whose initial relief at getting things back to normal, had hardly yet worn off, thought his ribs would surely burst he was laughing so much. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. Everyone was roaring and hooting with mirth as the unfortunate Gary hurried out into the corridor. Henry, though, was staring transfixed at the board behind their teacher. The look in his face when he eventually turned to Alex was one of wonderment.

  “That was you,” he breathed. “Wasn’t it?”

  Alex could only nod

  “Alright. Enough, enough,” said Mrs Wade, waving her hands ineffectually.

  Henry was giving Alex a searching look.

  “I’ll tell you after,” muttered Alex, dabbing his eyes with a tissue.

  He felt like he was walking on air. Great waves of power surged through him. He was a phenomenon, a wonder of science, or nature, or magic or such like. Amazing. How could life ever be the same after this? He had godlike powers. Let Gary and his pals mess with him now. They could look forward to some sneaky, and most importantly, totally un-attributable retribution.

  “That really, really was you wasn’t it?” Henry asked him as they sauntered towards the coach park at the end of school.

  “Mmm,hhh, ”affirmed Alex gleefully, with a glance behind to see that no one else was in earshot.

  “That is sooo weird,” said Henry with a low whistle. “If I hadn’t seen what you wrote on the board I’d never have believed it. Oh my god! That’s the weirdest thing I ever heard of. Wow! How do you do it?” He turned to Alex earnestly. “Do you think you can show me?”

  “You mustn’t tell anyone,” Alex told him. “Absolute top secret. D’you promise?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course”, Henry assured him, nodding fervently.

  Alex told Henry all about it, every last detail, whilst they waited for the Cardenbridge coach. Henry listened, nodding thoughtfully as Alex recounted the problems he encountered in getting things moving once more.

  “I’ll try it myself tomorrow,” he said. “Adventures in freeze frame, eh. What a scream! Double physics should be as good a chance as any.” He frowned. “You’ll have to be very careful though, Alex.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if there are too many hilarious and unexplained incidents happening to people you don’t like, people are going to start asking questions aren’t they?”

  “I guess so” shrugged Alex, feeling vaguely resentful that Henry was raining on his parade but conceding that he had a legitimate point.

  Alex could hardly sleep that night. He lay awake long after midnight whilst the day’s events replayed themselves in his mind. As yet he had barely dipped his toe into the vast ocean of possibility. Alex was not an especially mischievous boy but a strange and wonderful power seemed to have been bestowed upon him. It seemed ungrateful not to exploit it. As the clock on the wall above him ticked off the slow minutes of the night Alex rehearsed the things he would do the next day: things moved, things looked at, things drawn or written upon, forbidden places visited. His restless mind teemed with delicious possibilities.

  But at first they came to nothing. Which was perhaps a good thing, all in all. Hollow eyed from sleeplessness he shambled into school on Friday morning. His mum, who tended to be over anxious regarding his health, had been all for keeping him away from school. For once and to her surprise, Alex was insistent on struggling in regardless. She put it down to the new attitude he had promised to adopt with regard to his studies and squeezed his arm fondly as he hurried off to the end of the road where the coach stopped. Alex could hardly stop himself from running, despite the stubborn headache that had established itself above his left eye. If he had to drag himself there on his hands and knees that day he was going to school. Henry, when he joined him on the coach, was almost beside himself with excitement, having practised daydreaming since the moment he awoke.

  And yet double Physics proved to be a big disappointment. Henry and Alex daydreamed with a single-minded inattentiveness that earned them both a stern rebuke from Doctor Brean, Head of Science. To no avail. Time proceeded with the tedious regularity it was famous for. French and then Art followed break, but although Alex daydreamed with unheard of intensity nothing at all came of it. Two chastened and downcast boys sat gloomily at lunch, listlessly toying with the sausages that were such a rare treat nowadays and which their peers were devouring with enthusiasm.

  “I can’t understand it,” said Alex, regarding a suspiciously dark baked bean disapprovingly on the end of his fork. “It worked perfectly well yesterday.”

  “And I got a demerit from Hot Lips,” grumbled Henry, referring to the Art teacher, Miss Houlihan. “I’m beginning to think you made it all up.”

  “Oh are you now?” retorted Alex hotly. “And what about Gazza’s little motto on his bonce? I suppose that just materialised out of thin air. Funny how it wasn’t there at the beginning of the lesson. And what about the chewing gum? I suppose a wicked pixie shoved it up his hooter. Who do you think wrote that on the board? Keep the faith, Henry”

  “Yeah, well…” said Henry glaring gloomily out of the window to where Mr Jones was loading tents into a minibus. “I don’t know any more. I’m all mixed up about this.”

  After lunch came PE. It was harder to daydream here; hard, but not impossible, as Alex had once spectacularly demonstrated by being lobbed from thirty yards when he was in goal for Livingstone house. A few pensive moments off his goal line had cost his house a place in the final and Alex a week of painful derision from his team mates. He was late arriving at PE because he had lost the key to his locker and had to get the caretaker to cut off the padlock before he could get at his PE kit. Consequently the changing room was deserted as Alex pulled on his cricket whites. It was a warm afternoon. The distant sound of play on the field outside came in through the open window. Alex yawned, taking in a lungful of air redolent with stale sweat, liniment and compacted earth. He picked up his bat and made a few practice swishes with it, imagining a machine (accessible only to himself) which could download into his brain all the skills of the world’s leading sportsmen. Used to batting at number ten for the house team and seldom being called on to bowl, he considered what it would be like to score the winning runs in the House Cup, to pull a mighty six over the top of the sports hall whilst the assembled school gasped and cheered. “Hooray for Alex!” they shouted as he pulled off gloves and helmet to celebrate his fifty, raising his bat to all sides of the ground.

  Alex was suddenly conscious that it was quiet. The breeze that had stirred the bit of brown cardboard in the broken window pane above his head had ceased. The distant voices of cricketers were stilled. Alex felt his pulse quicken as he stepped out onto the pitch. On the bench behind the sports hall a boy with a sick note from his mother was frozen in the act of doing his homework. Two girls were walking past with a wire basket of rounders equipment. Out on the cricket pitch a game was in full swing. There was something majestic about the arrangement of the field, caught in a moment, third slip leaping like a salmon to his left, arm outstretched for the ball. The batsman, recognisable beneath his helmet as Henry, had a look of anticipated horror as the ball found the edge of his bat. All other eyes were directed at the ball, which had paused within an inch of the fielder’s fingertips. It was curious to see a speedin
g cricket ball hang motionless in the air, more curious still to touch it and feel some powerful force resist the pressure of his fingers. Despite all of his exertions he was unable to pluck it from the air. He was able, however, to move it a little way, so that its trajectory would carry it past the fielder’s hand, thereby sparing Henry’s wicket.

  “There you go, Henry,” he said. “Don’t say I never do you a favour.”

  Gary, absent from school that day, was spared Alex’s attentions. By all accounts he had been deeply shocked by yesterday’s events and Alex wondered if the two circumstances weren’t connected. He was probably still wondering how someone had written on his head without him noticing, how half the contents of the bin had found their way into his mouth, how he had managed to shove a piece of chewing gum halfway through his sinuses. The answers weren’t coming any time soon.

  So what to do? The girls’ showers proved to be unoccupied so Alex went into the gym, where a group of Year 8 girls were playing badminton. Shuttlecocks proved easier to move than cricket balls but the consequences of so doing seemed so slight it was hardly worth the effort. At the far end of the gym a group of boys and girls were using the trampoline. His heart leapt within him when he saw that the boy at the peak of his trajectory, mid somersault, was Macaulay Pitt. How sweet it would be to move the trampoline from beneath him? But how dangerous too, he was forced to concede and he didn’t actually want to kill Macaulay. Humiliation would do nicely instead.

  Alex fetched a pair of scissors from the first aid kit in the PE Staff Room and climbed up on to the trampoline. Standing close to its centre he was at the perfect height for cutting away Macaulay’s shorts and underpants. As he had come to expect it was very hard to manipulate the fabric. It was necessary to hold this in his hands for some time before it softened sufficiently for him to apply the scissors. After what felt like twenty minutes or so the shorts were removed safely into Alex’s pocket. The prospect of severe revulsion came between Alex and removing Macaulay’s pants, particularly since they were none to clean. He contented himself with making a couple of deep strategic cuts, leaving only a few connecting threads, so that they would certainly fall away the moment time re-started.

  “Sweet,” said Alex, surveying his handiwork with the pride of an artist.

  It took some time to find his next target. Mason, whose bad feet disqualified him from PE, was loitering in the area of litter strewn scrubland beyond the playing field known euphemistically as the “nature reserve”. Here he was refreshing himself with a cigarette. Many of the shrubs hereabout were permanently stunted, such was the popularity of this place amongst the nicotine addicted. Alex approached Mason warily, leaning close to inspect the glowing red end of the cigarette. He found that although it appeared to be alight it gave off no heat. He was quite able to hold it between thumb and forefinger to pull it free from Mason’s fingers. Having done this he reversed the cigarette and slid it back so that the glowing end was placed between Mason’s lips. As an afterthought he tucked the remains of Macaulay’s shorts into Mason’s pocket, leaving a corner hanging out for easy recognition.

  “Perfect,” he said.

  Having exacted full vengeance for his humiliation earlier in the week Alex walked jauntily across to the main block to have a look in the staff room. This proved less stimulating than he had hoped because Mr Keane, whose bald pate he longed to inscribe with some witty motto, was nowhere to be found. Alex was reading with interest some of the confidential material on the staff notice board when a vague sense of disquiet in the pit of his stomach told him it was time to move on. Nor was it a moment too soon. He had only just stepped out of the staff room when the world resumed its motion around him. He found himself suddenly face to face with Mr Davis, the Headmaster, whose presence in the corridor he had momentarily forgotten about. It was hard to say who was most shocked, since to the Headmaster it must have appeared that a boy had suddenly materialised in his path. Physical collision was only narrowly averted and even so Alex was treated to a close encounter with the great man’s famously lethal halitosis. For this reason Mr Davis, was generally referred to as “Death Breath.”

  Mr Davis emitted a strangled yelp and grasped Alex’s shoulder for support.

  “Good God, boy! Can’t you look out where you’re going!” he roared, it being quite out of the question that he himself might have been guilty of inattention.

  “I wasn’t in the staff room, sir,” Alex heard himself blurt out before the initial panic had abated. His next action, placing a hand over his mouth, seemed equally unwise when considered dispassionately, but neither this, nor the sudden pallor of his face seemed to register with the Headmaster, who merely glared at him fiercely before striding into his office. Alex took a couple of deep breaths and headed back to the sports hall. There was a great deal to think about. It seemed that Henry would be unable to join him in his adventures. Alex would have to get used to the idea of exploring the freeze frame world on his own. In purely practical terms stopping time seemed to have become much easier, but as for the mechanics of setting things going again, well that remained as much a mystery as ever.

  There had been something of a commotion in the gym. So Alex discovered when he made his way back through to the changing rooms. In the corridor outside, one of the more sensitive girls in Year 8 was being counselled, red faced, by a couple of the female PE staff. A number of other girls stood about giggling gleefully amongst themselves. The PE staff room door was closed, but Alex could hear raised voices from behind it, one of which belonged to Macaulay, raised in plaintive denial.

  “Shorts don’t just vanish into thin air, lad!” asserted that of Mr Jones. “And whatever have you done to your pants? Were you trying to make a spectacle of yourself? Eh? Answer me, boy!”

  Alex found it necessary to retreat into the boys’ changing room before the effort of containing his mirth ruptured some internal organ. Once in there he leaned against a wall and laughed until the tears ran down his face. He was still laughing intermittently when he joined the others at cricket and was assigned to his usual place on the boundary, where it was thought he could do least harm. Henry, still batting after his narrow escape a few minutes ago, struck the ball a fierce blow which carried over the bowler’s head and out towards the rounders pitch. This was sufficiently far from Alex for him to stand idly by with a clear conscience. The umpire, Mr Khan, signalled a four. Henry stamped his feet as the ball made its way back to the bowler. On the far side of the pitch a small figure, recognisable as Mason, emerged from the nature reserve, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand. He was heading for the changing rooms where he would doubtless encounter Macaulay. Even from this distance Alex could see the white scrap of shorts hanging out of his blazer pocket. Alex’s team had a spinner on now and Henry’s batting partner put on a resolutely negative defensive display for the ensuing over. The change of field meant that Alex could cross to the side of the pitch closer to the gym and the sports hall. From here, closer to the open windows of the changing rooms, Alex could enjoy the sweet, sweet sounds of Macaulay discovering that Mason was in possession of his shorts. This had clearly placed a strain on their relationship. Mason, who was somewhat smaller than Macaulay, soon re-emerged from the changing room clutching a bloodied handkerchief to his nose. Henry, leaning on his bat glanced across to see what was going on. Alex beamed across at his friend, licked his finger and made a long downward stroke in the air before him.

  Chapter Three

  The next day was Saturday. Alex awoke in a decidedly optimistic frame of mind. On Sunday his grandfather was taking him to an air show at the local RAF base. He had been looking forward to it for weeks. But there was Saturday to get through first and Saturday afternoon meant going shopping with his mum. This was undoubtedly a hardship. Still, the golden anticipated glow of the following day reached even as far as Cardenbridge Mead, the rather seedy shopping precinct in the centre of the town, whilst he trailed with his mum from one shoe shop to another. There were only th
ree shoe shops left in Cardenbridge, given that most of the smarter shops had migrated to the big new shopping centre at Collingwood, a few miles to the South. By this point, stopping time had become almost an obsession for Alex. He daydreamed extensively in all three shoe shops, whilst his mum tried on what seemed like a significant proportion of their stock. It was in Wardworths, one of the bigger shops in the High Street, however, that Alex finally rediscovered his gift. He was queuing with his mum at the checkout, clutching a vacuum flask and a pack of batteries. It was stuffy. A pig faced girl at the checkout cast her eyes upward in frustration over something and rang the bell for her supervisor. Alex shuffled his feet. He thought of the air show and suddenly he was swooping upon the assembled crowds behind the control column of a Spitfire Mark IX. Hauling back on the stick, the throaty roar of the mighty Merlin engine loud in his ears, Alex pulled into a slow barrel roll. A moment later and he was over Normandy in 1944, a Messerschmitt 109 abruptly sliding before his gun sights. Instinctively, Alex squeezed the button on the grip and felt the fighter judder as his cannon spat deadly shells. Bits flew off his foe and the starboard wing disintegrated in a puff of black smoke. Alex pulled into a tight turn and watched as a tiny white parachute blossomed far below. So absorbed was Alex in the movement of this unfolding drama he hardly noticed that Wardworths, and everything in it had ground to a halt. At length, with a start, he realised that all was still around him.

  “Way to go,” he said, with a slow nod.

  Alex went for a joyful wander around the shop. One of the tills was open and he could have helped himself to a handful of bank notes had he wished to. It was the same with the pick ‘n mix. He eyed the confectionary hungrily for a few moments before moving on. Alex wasn’t one of those boys who think a tiny theft is a thing of no consequence. After quite a short time Alex grew bored. He found, as expected, that everyone in the shop was completely rigid, hard as stone. As before, it was strangely difficult to move things, as though everything was held in place by powerful magnets. But once the force was broken, objects that had felt like stone became quite normal once more. He tugged at an improbably granite like balloon until it came away from the grip of the toddler who had held it. Then it was suddenly feather light in his hand. He carefully replaced it, and with a click, it snapped into place, restored to stony rigidity. He swapped the contents of two of the hand-baskets carried by people queuing at the till but he had no particular grudge against anyone in Wardworths. The possibilities seemed limited here. It was simply much more fun at school. He pulled out his phone from the top pocket of his shirt and found it to be useless. It would have been surprising if there had even been a signal but in fact the screen was quite dead. He shrugged. So. To get things going again…